A friend of mine popped over to see me with his iMac the other day. It's about 18 months old, Core 2 duo - around 2ghz I think. Sorry, I can't report exact revision. It's running Leopard.

His sound isn't working and looking in the sound preference pane then there is no sound device listed. Also system info reports no on board sound. This was repeated when I tried booting up from a 10.5 installation disk so I'm pretty sure it's a hardware fault rather than software.

He doesn't have AppleCare and the machine is out of warranty.

I have a set of USB earphones I was able to plug in and they worked fine, they report back as having a "c-media" sound device built in somehow.

I was thinking that a pair of speakers with their own built in sound device might be the cheapest way for him to get around this. Does anyone know of a reasonably priced set of speakers that might fit the bill? Just to stress, they must in some way contain their own sound chip as the onboard has just gone AWOL._________________My Flickr

I use a USB Griffin iMic with my iMac which works with any speakers / headphones.

I mainly have my headphones permanently connected to it, which saves me from continually having to reach behind the iMac and unplug them / plug them in.

It shows up in the sound preferences as a separate input / output device and I can quick switch the audio from internal speakers to iMic from the menu bar. (ALT click on the speaker icon to display a menu)

Ah - excellent Cypher. Thanks very much for the info. I was aware of the iMic but had thought it was only intended for input, not output too. I will point my friend off in that direction - and thanks from both of us _________________My Flickr

But a warning if your friends sound card went out i would be concerned his motherboard is next because the sound card is attached to the mainboard.

Yes, I had been through that with him. I can't understand why he didn't get AppleCare on that iMac to be honest. It's often the price of one repair or less (depending on the fault)._________________My Flickr

I might want to get one of these for myself to be honest. I have a plan to record interviews with some of my elderly relatives to record their memories of WW2 etc. High quality, low noise sounds desirable. Just have to dig out the mic I used to have somewhere..._________________My Flickr